A trans cartoonist who received backlash due to her book tour has decided to further extend it.
French-Canadian cartoonist Sophie Labelle, 34 recently released her first print illustration book, The Best of Assigned Male, through Hachette and has been on tour since the end of February.
Online backlash and ‘drama’ happened after she opened book tour to families with teenagers as young as 13 years old.
Sophie Labelle responded to the backlash she said: “People in the UK needed more Sophie time.”
When asked about it Sophie said: “They [anti-trans people] contact every single event of my tour, every single venue, and employee to try and stop it.
“They would be using lies about trans people in general and say it was promoting sexuality towards children, which it wasn’t.”
The cartoonist said her art wasn’t really aimed at children, but at queer and trans people, so creating something that was biased was the goal, which she claimed she achieved.
Even though her characters are 11 years old, most of her fanbase are older than 15 years old.
When she came to Sheffield on Monday 27th, anti-trans people had organised a protest outside of the library but no one showed up, instead dozens of people came together as a counter-protest to show their support towards the trans cartoonist.
Sophie was happy about how the book event turned out, describing it as fun and cheerful.
Sophie got quite emotional when a parent came up to her, she said: “There was this parent who really brought me to tears because there’s so little representation out there for trans people and I was creating something that was positive for trans youth—she told me it was lifesaving for them and we ended up crying.”
But even though the tour was open to children, Sophie said that Sheffield was the only one so far where no children were present at the event.
The cartoonist said: “With all the threats and harassment that the library received I think that was threatening for families. It turned out to be the anti-trans people who were a threat to the children.”